


Stephanie

by Lines_of_Pain_and_Glory



Category: Family Guy
Genre: F/M, Romance, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-06
Updated: 2014-09-06
Packaged: 2018-02-16 08:14:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2262387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lines_of_Pain_and_Glory/pseuds/Lines_of_Pain_and_Glory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If he had a dollar for every time he’d tried to pick up a girl in a bar only to have her roll her eyes and say, “It’s me, Brian,” he’d be a rich dog.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stephanie

Brian turns up the collar of his raincoat, shivering. It’s a drizzly, cold evening in London, but his tail wags happily as he makes his way to the pub. He’s excited, if a little nervous, to see his old friend again. So much has changed in the eleven years since he last saw Stewie. They talk on the phone every once in a while, but Stewie hasn’t been home since the summer after of his freshman year at M.I.T.

***********************

“Your family misses you, you know.”

“Ha, I’m sure they don’t.” Stewie’s voice was laced with bitterness. His intelligence had always made him the black sheep of the family and his relationship with his parents and siblings had only gotten worse as he got older.

“Well, I miss you, Kid.” Brian didn’t want to lay the guilt on too thick for fear that Stewie would cut him out of his life completely too.

“You’ve always been a good friend, Brian.” Stewie paused. “I’ve been offered a tenure-track position teaching here at Oxford.”

“Really? That’s amazing. Congratulations!” Brian wasn’t surprised. Stewie graduated at the top of his class at M.I.T. and earned his PhD in physics from Caltech in record time. “Are you going to accept?”

“I suppose so.” Stewie sounded resigned. He often lamented that he’d peaked too early.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Blasted infantile amnesia! I can’t remember any of it! The specs for the time machine, how I genetically modified your stem cells, any of it.” Brian had been furious with Stewie for experimenting on him without telling him at the time, but now he was unbelievably grateful for the human life expectancy Stewie had managed to give him. 

“Didn’t you keep notes?”

“Meticulously.” Stewie had said in despair. “They’re all gibberish. I was a toddler. I couldn’t write properly. I just made squiggles that only had meaning to me. Now it’s all gone forever and I have to struggle for measly inches of scientific advancement like the rest of my oafish colleagues.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“At any rate, now that I won’t be bouncing between post-docs any longer, you should come see me.” Stewie continued, “I have a bit of other news that I’d rather share in person.”

“Yeah, that sounds great! It’ll be like old times.”

But something had sunk a little in Brian’s heart. He could only think of one thing Stewie would want to tell him in person. He’d finally met someone. Brian had always known Stewie was gay, but Stewie had had a really hard time as a teenager. He’d already been such an outcast at home and at school. He never came out to the family. Brian should have been happy for him, happy that Stewie had finally made it to a point where he was comfortable sharing that part of his life with Brian, but it stung to think that the kid he’d watched take his first steps, say his first words (“Must kill Lois!”), had already found love when Brian was still alone.

*************************

The pub isn’t busy this time of year with the students who probably usually frequent it away on winter break. It doesn’t look like Stewie’s here yet, so Brian goes to the bar and orders himself a dry martini. He can’t help noticing the hot redhead sitting alone at the end of the bar. She has her nose buried in a book like she doesn’t want to be disturbed, but he feels inexplicably drawn to her. Maybe it’s because she looks a little like Lois did in her prime. She’s probably about thirty, dressed conservatively in a knee-length pencil skirt and sweater vest over a silk button down blouse, drinking neat Scotch, and reading a very thick, dry looking book.

“Uh, hi, is this seat taken?” It seems like a stupid opening line with the pub so empty.

She just shakes her head “no” without looking up, her hair falling over her face.

Brian climbs up on the bar stool next to her. “What are you reading?” He tries one more time.

“I’m trying to decide on a textbook for my undergraduate course next semester.”

Brian nearly falls off the bar stool. The voice is unmistakable, as are the eyes that come up to meet his as she closes the book and carefully sets it aside.

“Stewie?” He stammers. Stewie had made a convincing girl when he was little, but this is unbelievable.

She (he?) bites her lip nervously, looking down. “I go by Stephanie now, Brian.”

“Oh…” He stares dumbstruck.

“I realize this is probably a lot to take in.” Brian recognizes that frown too, the lips pressed together into a hard line. “I’ll just give you some time.”

“No, wait!” He lays his paw on her arm, trying to keep her from getting up, “Stew--, Stephanie… Stephanie…Stephanie.” He repeats, amazed at how right it feels on his tongue. “You…you’re a woman now.”

“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” the personality hasn’t changed at all, “but actually I’ve always been a woman. It’s hardly my fault you were all too stupid to notice.” Her acerbic tone softens just a little. “When I met my future self in San Francisco, I realized how dreadfully my life would turn out if I was too cowardly to live it as myself.”

“Ok, yeah, I think I get it, I just…wow. When did…this happen?” Brian gestures at her body, still groping for words.

“I knew those small-minded twits you call my family would never understand, so I had to wait until I was away at college to begin transitioning. It’s been…a long process.” Stephanie takes a sip of the Scotch in front of her.

“Wow.” Brian shakes his head in amazement. “You’re just…so beautiful.” Forget Lois, she’s got curves like Jessica Rabbit under that sweater vest. 

A thin smile twists her lips. “I knew you were either going to go mental or just hit on me.”

“I didn’t mean it like that!” Brian protests.

“Oh, please, why do you think I invited you here, Brian?” She tosses that gorgeous auburn hair back, cocking an eyebrow suggestively at him. “You’ve always been attracted to me…the real me…and I’ve been mad about you since before I can remember.”

His mouth hangs open in shock…thinking back on all those escapades, Karina Smirnoff, all the other times he had hit on Stewie by “mistake.” If he had a dollar for every time he’d tried to pick up a girl in a bar only to have her roll her eyes and say “It’s me, Brian,” he’d be a rich dog. It hadn’t been a mistake at all. He’d always had such strong feelings for the boy…it was just…he’d been a boy.

“But it’s been so long. I mean, we’re different people.” Literally. He chuckles a little nervously. “How do you know you still feel-”

“I don’t.” She takes his paw in her hand, staring seriously into his eyes. “I don’t, Brian. All I’m asking is if you want to try.”

“Are you kidding me?” His tail wags, as he pulls her into a hug. “But you’ve got to promise me one thing, Steph.”

“What?”

“Promise me no matter what happens…we’ll always stay friends. I’ve really missed you, Kid.”

“Damn you, Dog.” She sniffs, burying her face in the fur of his neck. “You’re going to make me ruin my mascara.”

 

It’s like starting right where they left off, a rom-com movie montage: ice-skating, snowball fights, trying on silly hats on Portabello Road, sipping hot drinks by the fire, holding hands on the London Eye, and gazing into each other’s eyes across the table, the books in front of each of them forgotten, except Steph is Stewie, so their first kiss is at the Tower of London, “It’s so thrilling, don’t you think? All that delightful blood and gore,” and she doesn’t say “I love you” first, she writes it in laser beams in her lab.

“You don’t have to say it back, but these will cut you like a hot knife through butter…so just you know…keep that in mind.”

He laughs and licks her face, “I’ve never loved anyone as much as I love you. Stephanie Gilligan Griffin, will you be my wife?” 

“Oh, Brian!” Her face lights up then falls. “These are conflict-free, aren’t they?”

“What? No.”

“Butter, Brian.” She glares warningly.

“Ok, you caught me. I donated the money I saved to Darfur.” He rubs the back of his neck sheepishly.

“Well, I suppose that’s what marriage is about, isn’t it?” She smiles, sliding the ring onto her finger. “Compromise.”

Yeah, if you’d asked him to describe his perfect woman, he never would have said, “She likes to imagine she can hear the tiny screams of maimed child laborers from her jewelry. She sleeps with a loaded glock on her nightstand and quotes Ayn Rand a lot and uses extra paper towels just out of spite if they have one of those ‘these come from trees’ stickers,” but damned if he doesn’t love her anyway, his beautiful, quirky, evil genius.

 

“I just never thought I’d get to see my little girl’s weddin’.” Lois dabs at her eyes.

“What about me, Mom?”

“Meg, Honey, you’re forty-five, you have three cats, and pretty much everything about that outfit says even you’ve given up, but, oh, my baby’s gettin’ married!”

“Alright, alright, that’s enough of that.” Steph flails ineffectually, trying to escape the smothering embrace.

 

“I told you.” He wraps his arms around her in bed that night.

“I still despise them.”

“But they’re your family and they love you.”

She sighs, scratching behind his ears. “You’re my family, Bry, and I love you.”

“I love you too, Steph.” He always has, the one, the girl he’d been looking for had been hidden in plain sight, right beside him the whole time.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m kind of nervous about trying to write a transgender character, so if I've done something stupid feel free to yell at me so I can do better. :)
> 
> Edit: Smothering not smoothing. Sorry, that was going to drive me nuts for all of eternity. Why am I such a bad proofreader?


End file.
